While we were all enjoying a well earned Christmas break, the CIPD were publishing brilliant reports right under our noses. On December 23rd the CIPD published ‘Megatrends: are organisations losing the trust of their workers?’
The Megatrends series identifies four potential emerging trends which are predicted to have a significant impact in the work place. This publication is the second in the series and focuses on the breakdown of trust in organisations.
This is a very significant issue for HR professionals. If a company’s employees have no trust in their managers or their organisation as a whole, then how can we expect them to work to their full capacity? A lack of trust will effect employee motivation, performance, retention and satisfaction.
Some organisations have used a well known exercise during team building programmes where one person with their eyes closed is told to fall back and hope that their colleague will catch them. Does this show trust though? Is this simply a superficial show of trust, a one day cop out?
Maintaining trust in an organisation is an everyday job. It is about taking care of your employees and showing them that they are integral to the company’s success. Here I find myself returning to the DREAMS solution for creating the best workplace.
To remind you, DREAMS stands for:
D – Difference
R – Radical honesty
E – Extra value
A – Authenticity
M – Meaning
S – Simple rules
The key themes in this mnemonic for trust are R, A and M.
Radical honesty involves the organisation’s leaders trusting their employees with the truth of the business. This may involve including all employees in business planning meetings, so they know the direction of the business, or being honest when the company has hit hard times. If leaders show this level of trust with their employees then they will return the favour.
Authenticity means practicing what you preach. Your organisation’s values aren’t just for the benefit of your clients, they’re for your staff too. So if you preach equality of staff members then practice it too. Your staff will thank you and so will your clients. “Show not tell” is the valuable message here.
Meaning is showing your employees that their work has an impact on the organisation as whole. If your employees think they can slide by unnoticed then they will, but if you show them that their role is integral then they will want to work hard to prove this.
So how do you promote these ideas in your organisation? The answer is simple: through your leaders by creating a coaching culture. The days of gimmicky and superficial training events surely must be over, as these days it is a tired and second rate solution. Your employees need to see the efforts from their leaders not an outside source who appears and disappears in one day.
ILM’s Coaching and Mentoring qualification teaches leaders to unlock the capability in their employees and build a strong working relationship between managers and their teams. This is the first step in building trust back into your organisation and many benefits will follow. So why not have a look into ILM’s Coaching and Mentoring qualifications for your managers? It’s an investment you won’t regret.
Don’t forget to have a go at our January word game. Using the image on the right try one of these three tasks:
- The best sentence using the three words from one of the six segments
- The most innovative sentence using as many words as possible
- The worse possible sentence using all words available
And please support us in our trials and tribulations as we battle Dry January. We have already lost a couple of brave soldiers but with your donations, the rest of us will surely succeed!